The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus in which an image can be easily replaced with another image among a plurality of documents.
Conventionally, a digital type copier has been widely known which is structured as follows: a document is optically scanned; an optical image is received by a photoelectric conversion element such as a line image sensor so that the image is converted into an electric signal; the signal is converted into a digital signal; and an electrostatic latent image is formed on a photoreceptor by a writing device such as a semiconductor laser according to image information of the document which has been converted into the digital signal. (Refer to Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 157070/1987).
Some digital type color copiers have editing processing functions of the image information in which various image processing such as color conversion, trimming, reversing, masking, and halftoning are conducted with respect to a specified area of the document, and image information can be recorded. (Refer to Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 27369/1990.)
In the above described image processing according to the specified area, when the image processing area is specified by marking using a marker, the color of which is different from the color of the document to be read, the subject image to be read can be discriminated from information of the specified area.
In copying operations, it is desired in some cases that only necessary portions of two sheets of document are synthesized with each other so that desired copies can be obtained. In this case, conventionally, documents are pasted-up and synthesized on the document to be read, and then, recording operations are conducted. In the case where documents are synthesized on the image data, image data obtained by reading two sheets of document are synthesized using an editor for editing. Further, in the case where it is desired to obtain a hard copy of the synthesized image, it is necessary that the synthesized image data is inputted into a printer (a digital type copier) and a recording operation is carried out.
As described above, in the conventional digital type copier, various image processing can be easily carried out on one document when the apparatus is provided with a marker edit function. However, when two documents are synthesized, troublesome operations are necessary, which is a problem.